Search This Blog

Remember, remember

Did you know that Guy Fawkes wasn’t hung, drawn and quartered? The internet tells me that he actually threw himself off the gallows whilst awaiting the grisly execution they had planned, and he broke his neck and died. They still quartered him and sent chunks of his body to different parts of the country, but he didn’t have his testicles and his guts removed whilst he was still alive so, you know. Could have been worse!

Despite it being a very weird tradition, I really bloody love Bonfire Night. My grandad used to be a leader at the local Beaver Scouts and would host a small bonfire and firework party on a field he owns, which the grandkids used to go along to as well. Once the Beavers had all gone we’d gather in my grandparents kitchen for pie and peas. Not all good memories though. I remember one year crying because I had to wear the My Little Pony hat and scarf set my mum had lovingly chosen and bought for me, but I hated because the appliqué badge on the hat was really scratchy on the inside and made my forehead itchy and horrible - sorry Mum! There was also the year my older brother poked me in the eyes whilst wearing ski gloves. Ok, I *might* have goaded him a bit, but a prod in the eyes and an evening surrounded by smoke is not a good mix!

This year we’ve had quite a lot firework action. We’ve seen quite a few out bedroom window and on Thursday I walked the kids round the corner to our local PTA’s little display. Both kids really enjoyed it and I was glad of the test run for bigger display we had already booked tickets for.

Tonight we attended a fantastic display at Silverstone. Tickets granted you admission to the track for the day and for a stunt car display early evening. We decided to give that bit a miss to reduce chances of cold, whiney, kids by the time it actually got to the fireworks. Didn’t quite go that way, but was worth a shot!

I was definitely glad we’d booked tickets in advance. We walked straight through the gates, but the queue to buy tickets there was huge. There was one grandstand open with first come first served seating. We headed there first but there were only a few seats left right at the back, and not knowing where the fireworks were going off from we thought the canopy might obscure our view. We were lucky and managed to stand in a pretty good spot just in front of the grandstand. Although we had half an hour until the start of the display Charlotte was in the buggy, and Benjamin was in the sling so it wasn’t a problem. I’m glad we didn’t arrive any later than we did - I’ve no idea where they put all the people who were in the queue when we just waltzed in!

The fireworks themselves were really, really good, and tickets not that expensive at £12 a piece. There looked to be plenty of food and drink stalls, if needed, and someone selling bobble hats to those who weren’t quite prepared for the bitterly cold night.

One word of advice, take real note of where you park! The car park wasn’t very well lit and we had to walk a few laps of the general area of where we thought we were parked before we located the car. Also, be prepared for a long wait to get out of the carpark. Luckily Benjamin dropped off almost immediately, and Charlotte not long after we left the car park.

Just home and now and bed transfer was successfully completed. Time to warm up with a Baileys hot chocolate and maybe the final episode of Gunpowder.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular Posts

A few days ago we returned from our first ever trip to Disneyland Paris. I have started writing about our holiday a few times since we returned but found that all the logistical, organisational type information was getting lost amongst telling you what a lovely time we had. Therefore, I'm going to run the risk of boring you stupid and split this into more than one post. Alrighty then, let's do the fun "trip report" first (you can find details of what and how we booked here.)

I had told the kids we were going to Disneyland beforehand, no elaborate "reveal" here, but I'd wanted to prepare them. I actually wasn't sure how they would react to the characters and costumes so showed them a few photos and videos I'd found online so they could see what the characters look like, and that there was no need to be afraid of them. I think this really paid off as they were so confident at the "meet and greets" we did.

Throughout my life I've had many different people comment on how organised I am. This, however, is an illusion and certainly doesn't extend to my housekeeping! If something's not written down, it doesn't get done. I do love a list though, and stationery, so that works pretty well for me. I've always had a planner of some form or another, and a million and one notebooks lying around with various lists in. I have found coordinating the diaries and lists of four people and a cat (he has a surprising number of commitments!) quite tricky so have recently jumped onto the bullet journal band wagon. Who knew that there was such a huge online community focused on what is essentially a neat system to keep all your appointments and lists in one place?!

It does appear that I'm not the only one in the house who likes to know what we're doing though. About 6 months ago I was getting really fed up of trying to explain what was happening when to Charlotte. She was continu…

If you follow me on Instagram you will know that last month we raised some butterflies. I posted a few pictures and a LOT of stories over there whilst the little project was on-going but I thought it'd be nice to create a blog post about it with some more details. WARNING: this is going to be a pretty long post with quite a lot of photos - so grab a cuppa and a Hobnob or two! Stu came home from work towards the end of last year saying a colleague had been talking about some butterflies his children raised over the summer. Stu thought it sounded good and wanted to look at doing it with our two. A bit of research on the Insect Lore website told us you could only buy caterpillars between March and September so we decided it'd be something we'd do around their birthdays this year.

Our caterpillars arrived through the post on 3rd July. They came via Royal Mail and were literally handed over in a post bag by the Post Woman. I hadn't realised what I had been handed so promptl…